C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

I was having a hard time keeping all of the possible scenarios straight. “So if Buddy or somebody else was trying to make Sissy too obvious a suspect, to set up Tim Bandicoot, then I guess that all fell apart when Sissy confessed.”

Eric tried to check the paint again but Aubrey slapped his hand away. “That’s right,” she said.

We waited a long fifteen minutes for the pizza to come and then ate it like it was our last meal. Every few minutes Eric or I poked the cross and held up a shiny gold fingertip. Aubrey never once touched the cross, leading me to gather she already had a pretty good hunch how long it would take. Only after the pizza was gone, a full forty-five minutes, did Eric’s finger come up dry.

“So,” I said, sucking the gooey tomato sauce out of my teeth, “the poison had to be painted on the cross during that little window of time after all.”

Aubrey was pleased with herself. “And that means the killer had to be there right before the service started.”

“Which leaves us where?” I asked.

“Which leaves us with a bazillion suspects. Sissy. Guthrie Gates. Tim Bandicoot, assuming he was dumb enough to set up Sissy so clumsily. Maybe Bandicoot’s wife. Maybe the eyebrow woman. Maybe Elaine Albert or that Dillow guy, or Buddy Wing himself, or somebody else on the TV production staff, or any member of the church past or present, or somebody we’re not even aware of.”

“Good gravy,” I said.

“Still we’ve made big-time progress today,” Aubrey said.

Knowing the shaky financial condition of those two, I dug into my purse to pay the bill. Neither objected. “We have?”

“Absolutely. The paint proves the killer was there right before the service. All we’ve got to do now is prove that Sissy wasn’t. Which shouldn’t be too hard at all.”

“That’s right,” I said as we slid from the booth, “the mysterious baby girl.”

Having been assigned to scrounge up the Bible and gold paint, Eric was totally in the dark. “Mysterious baby girl?”

Aubrey wrapped her arm around his. She was almost giddy. “I almost peed my pants when the eyebrow woman told us that.”

In the parking lot Aubrey and Eric behaved like a couple of deer in rut, poking and pushing and giggling, squeezing each other’s backsides. I wanted to knock them in the head with my purse. I liked them both. But I did not like them together. Oh, I’m sure the sex was more than Eric could ever have hoped for. And I couldn’t blame him for taking advantage of his good fortune. I’d once done that myself with Dale Marabout. But Aubrey McGinty was way out of Eric’s league. She was worldly and ambitious, and more than a little self-centered. I couldn’t picture her staying in any relationship very long. Certainly never long enough to get married and have kids. Once the sex wore off, Eric’s penchant for losing things and forgetting things would start driving her crazy. She’d start finding fault with his Mountain Dew drinking and the careless way he dressed. Little by little he’d go from love monkey to lapdog to road kill.

And I’d be the one with the shovel scraping him up.

Monday, May 8

Monday afternoon, at exactly four, Dale Marabout pushed himself away from his desk, stood up, swung his chair once around his body like a giant discus and slammed it into his computer. He yelled out the three words I’d been dreading for some weeks now: “ I. FUCKING. QUIT. ”

Before the elevator door closed he shouted a single word at Aubrey, who had her knees on her desk and the Hannawa white pages in her lap: “ HAPPY?”

I hurried down the stairwell as fast as I could and intercepted Dale on the parking deck. He was crying like a baby. While we hugged I reached into his pants pocket for the handkerchief I knew he carried there. I dabbed his eyes and whispered “It’ll be okay” I don’t know how many times.

Dale was ripe for a mid-life crisis no matter what was going on at the paper. He was in his late forties and his kids were grown. Whatever secret dreams he carried inside him were simply dreams now, defeated by the limits of his talent and his metabolism. So in my mind Tinker’s transferring in from Baton Rouge, or Aubrey McGinty waltzing in from Rush City, had very little do with Dale’s anger. He was angry with himself.

“Wait an hour,” I told him, “then go back to your desk with a mug of coffee and a cookie and nobody will say a thing.”

He tried to unlock his car but I strategically squashed my backside against the door. “There’s no way in hell I’m going back in there,” he said.

“Yelling ‘I quit’ is not the same as writing ‘I quit.’ Until you give Tinker a written resignation, you haven’t officially resigned. You’ve just gone a little crazy. You’re allowed. All will be forgiven.”

“Move your ass,” he said.

I moved and he drove off. He didn’t show up for work the next day and Sylvia Berdache told me Tinker had an e-mail waiting for him when he got to work. It said: “In case you haven’t heard by now, I.

So Dale’s resignation was official and I felt just awful about it. I stewed about it all week and on Friday afternoon sneaked upstairs to see Bob Averill. He smiled and shook my hand with both his hands. “Maddy, why is it we don’t get a chance to talk anymore?” I’m sure he figured his horrible week was going to end on a high note, the long-prayed-for retirement of Dolly Madison Sprowls. Instead I dumped Dale Marabout’s resignation in his lap.

His smile sagged. “I heard about that.”

“Not my version, you haven’t,” I said.

He listened to what I had to say. Then he called Tinker upstairs and had me repeat the whole thing to him.

Saturday, May 13

Saturday morning, Aubrey, Eric and I were supposed to drive down to Mingo Junction to check out Sissy’s mystery baby. But at eight Aubrey called me. She was absolutely furious. “They smashed out my windows. Went right around my car with a goddamn sledgehammer or something. Right in the goddamn garage.”

“Who’s they?” I asked.

“Take your pick. Those Nazis cops in the 3rd District who don’t want me writing about their asshole commander. Those crazy Christians who don’t want me to free Sissy. Those pimps who don’t want me talking to their meal tickets. That wacko pal of yours.”

“I think we can rule out Dale Marabout,” I said.

“Do you? I think we can put him at the top of the list.”

“Stop talking crazy.”

“He blames me for his lousy life, Maddy.”

Now I was the furious one. Dale did not have a lousy life. He had a good life. I came very close to telling her that she was the one with the lousy life. I twisted my bangs until I was under control. “I gather this means we’re not going to Mingo Junction today.”

“It means that Eric’s driving. Unless you want to drive.”

I did not want to drive. I did not even want to go.

But I did go.

And I did drive, Aubrey next to me with her knees propped on the dash, Eric sprawled in the back seat with a big bottle of Mountain Dew.

One reason Eric Chen was coming along on this week’s snoopfest was that he and Aubrey had copulated into a couple. They were still in the inseparable stage. The more utilitarian reason was that he was from Youngstown, which is just north of Mingo Junction, in that impoverished southeastern slab of Ohio where nobody in their right mind ever visits.

I would have taken the Ohio Turnpike all the way to Youngstown and then followed State Route 11 down the Ohio River. Eric made me zig-zag along a series of narrow county roads. We went through one worthless town after another. We had lunch at a Dairy Queen in East Liverpool and then picked up Route 7 for our final descent into trepidation.